1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to certain and useful improvements in strap buckles and more particularly, in strap buckles, such as belt buckles, which utilize a rotatable locking element for permitting slidable movement of a strap through the buckle and selective locking of the strap when pulled in an opposite direction with respect to the buckle.
2. Brief Description of Related Art
There has been a large number of belt and strap buckles which utilize a slide pinch principle, that is, where a belt is allowed to slide through the buckle and is pinched or locked in a particular position by a locking element. Usually, this locking element is a pivotable or rotatable locking element. While these types of buckles are commonly known, they also present several disadvantages.
In many cases, the strap buckle, such as a belt buckle, is not universally adaptable to receiving belts of varying thicknesses. This is particularly true when the strap is a belt article of wearing apparel such that the strap buckle becomes a belt buckle. In many cases, the belt buckle is designed to receive a belt only of a particular thickness. In other cases, because of the moving and rotatable components, the belt buckle is not particularly reliable and often suffers several failures. Moreover, many of these prior art type belt buckles utilize several moving components and therefore, become expensive to manufacture and assemble.
Representative of these various related art strap and belt buckles is U.S. Pat. No. 1,494,288 dated May 13, 1924 to Rosenblum for Belt Buckle; U.S. Pat. No. 1,360,123 dated Nov. 23, 1920 to Lewis for Belt Buckle; U.S. Pat. No. 3,686,715, dated Aug. 29, 1972 to Brodnicki for Strap System for Material Handling; U.S. Pat. No. 3,605,205 dated Sep. 20, 1971 to Crissy for Low Profile Buckle; U.S. Pat. No. 950,434 dated Feb. 22, 1910 to Carlson for Strap Fastener; U.S. Pat. No. 4,502,188 dated Mar. 5, 1985 to Kohli for Theme Belt Buckle; U.S. Pat. No. 1,482,009 dated Aug. 4, 1992 to Heberling for Belt Buckle; U.S. Pat. No. 1,643,083 dated Sep. 20, 1927 to Otten for Strap Buckle; U.S. Pat. No. 1,394,380 dated Oct. 18, 1921 to Wardner for Buckle; and French Patent no. 1,204,470 to Rignault.
Heretofore, there has not been a low cost, highly efficient strap buckle which is sturdy and eliminates the aforementioned problems associated with those strap buckles of the type mentioned above.